1 CONFIG_RCU_TRACE debugfs Files and Formats
4 The rcutree and rcutiny implementations of RCU provide debugfs trace
5 output that summarizes counters and state. This information is useful for
6 debugging RCU itself, and can sometimes also help to debug abuses of RCU.
7 The following sections describe the debugfs files and formats, first
8 for rcutree and next for rcutiny.
11 CONFIG_TREE_RCU and CONFIG_PREEMPT_RCU debugfs Files and Formats
13 These implementations of RCU provide several debugfs directories under the
14 top-level directory "rcu":
20 Each directory contains files for the corresponding flavor of RCU.
21 Note that rcu/rcu_preempt is only present for CONFIG_PREEMPT_RCU.
22 For CONFIG_TREE_RCU, the RCU flavor maps onto the RCU-sched flavor,
23 so that activity for both appears in rcu/rcu_sched.
25 In addition, the following file appears in the top-level directory:
26 rcu/rcutorture. This file displays rcutorture test progress. The output
27 of "cat rcu/rcutorture" looks as follows:
29 rcutorture test sequence: 0 (test in progress)
30 rcutorture update version number: 615
32 The first line shows the number of rcutorture tests that have completed
33 since boot. If a test is currently running, the "(test in progress)"
34 string will appear as shown above. The second line shows the number of
35 update cycles that the current test has started, or zero if there is
39 Within each flavor directory (rcu/rcu_bh, rcu/rcu_sched, and possibly
40 also rcu/rcu_preempt) the following files will be present:
43 Displays fields in struct rcu_data.
45 Displays statistics for expedited grace periods.
47 Displays grace-period counters.
49 Displays the struct rcu_node hierarchy.
51 Displays counts of the reasons rcu_pending() decided that RCU had
54 Displays RCU boosting statistics. Only present if
57 The output of "cat rcu/rcu_preempt/rcudata" looks as follows:
59 0!c=30455 g=30456 pq=1/0 qp=1 dt=126535/140000000000000/0 df=2002 of=4 ql=0/0 qs=N... b=10 ci=74572 nci=0 co=1131 ca=716
60 1!c=30719 g=30720 pq=1/0 qp=0 dt=132007/140000000000000/0 df=1874 of=10 ql=0/0 qs=N... b=10 ci=123209 nci=0 co=685 ca=982
61 2!c=30150 g=30151 pq=1/1 qp=1 dt=138537/140000000000000/0 df=1707 of=8 ql=0/0 qs=N... b=10 ci=80132 nci=0 co=1328 ca=1458
62 3 c=31249 g=31250 pq=1/1 qp=0 dt=107255/140000000000000/0 df=1749 of=6 ql=0/450 qs=NRW. b=10 ci=151700 nci=0 co=509 ca=622
63 4!c=29502 g=29503 pq=1/0 qp=1 dt=83647/140000000000000/0 df=965 of=5 ql=0/0 qs=N... b=10 ci=65643 nci=0 co=1373 ca=1521
64 5 c=31201 g=31202 pq=1/0 qp=1 dt=70422/0/0 df=535 of=7 ql=0/0 qs=.... b=10 ci=58500 nci=0 co=764 ca=698
65 6!c=30253 g=30254 pq=1/0 qp=1 dt=95363/140000000000000/0 df=780 of=5 ql=0/0 qs=N... b=10 ci=100607 nci=0 co=1414 ca=1353
66 7 c=31178 g=31178 pq=1/0 qp=0 dt=91536/0/0 df=547 of=4 ql=0/0 qs=.... b=10 ci=109819 nci=0 co=1115 ca=969
68 This file has one line per CPU, or eight for this 8-CPU system.
69 The fields are as follows:
71 o The number at the beginning of each line is the CPU number.
72 CPUs numbers followed by an exclamation mark are offline,
73 but have been online at least once since boot. There will be
74 no output for CPUs that have never been online, which can be
75 a good thing in the surprisingly common case where NR_CPUS is
76 substantially larger than the number of actual CPUs.
78 o "c" is the count of grace periods that this CPU believes have
79 completed. Offlined CPUs and CPUs in dynticks idle mode may lag
80 quite a ways behind, for example, CPU 4 under "rcu_sched" above,
81 which has been offline through 16 RCU grace periods. It is not
82 unusual to see offline CPUs lagging by thousands of grace periods.
83 Note that although the grace-period number is an unsigned long,
84 it is printed out as a signed long to allow more human-friendly
85 representation near boot time.
87 o "g" is the count of grace periods that this CPU believes have
88 started. Again, offlined CPUs and CPUs in dynticks idle mode
89 may lag behind. If the "c" and "g" values are equal, this CPU
90 has already reported a quiescent state for the last RCU grace
91 period that it is aware of, otherwise, the CPU believes that it
92 owes RCU a quiescent state.
94 o "pq" indicates that this CPU has passed through a quiescent state
95 for the current grace period. It is possible for "pq" to be
96 "1" and "c" different than "g", which indicates that although
97 the CPU has passed through a quiescent state, either (1) this
98 CPU has not yet reported that fact, (2) some other CPU has not
99 yet reported for this grace period, or (3) both.
101 o "qp" indicates that RCU still expects a quiescent state from
102 this CPU. Offlined CPUs and CPUs in dyntick idle mode might
103 well have qp=1, which is OK: RCU is still ignoring them.
105 o "dt" is the current value of the dyntick counter that is incremented
106 when entering or leaving idle, either due to a context switch or
107 due to an interrupt. This number is even if the CPU is in idle
108 from RCU's viewpoint and odd otherwise. The number after the
109 first "/" is the interrupt nesting depth when in idle state,
110 or a large number added to the interrupt-nesting depth when
111 running a non-idle task. Some architectures do not accurately
112 count interrupt nesting when running in non-idle kernel context,
113 which can result in interesting anomalies such as negative
114 interrupt-nesting levels. The number after the second "/"
115 is the NMI nesting depth.
117 o "df" is the number of times that some other CPU has forced a
118 quiescent state on behalf of this CPU due to this CPU being in
121 o "of" is the number of times that some other CPU has forced a
122 quiescent state on behalf of this CPU due to this CPU being
123 offline. In a perfect world, this might never happen, but it
124 turns out that offlining and onlining a CPU can take several grace
125 periods, and so there is likely to be an extended period of time
126 when RCU believes that the CPU is online when it really is not.
127 Please note that erring in the other direction (RCU believing a
128 CPU is offline when it is really alive and kicking) is a fatal
129 error, so it makes sense to err conservatively.
131 o "ql" is the number of RCU callbacks currently residing on
132 this CPU. The first number is the number of "lazy" callbacks
133 that are known to RCU to only be freeing memory, and the number
134 after the "/" is the total number of callbacks, lazy or not.
135 These counters count callbacks regardless of what phase of
136 grace-period processing that they are in (new, waiting for
137 grace period to start, waiting for grace period to end, ready
140 o "qs" gives an indication of the state of the callback queue
141 with four characters:
143 "N" Indicates that there are callbacks queued that are not
144 ready to be handled by the next grace period, and thus
145 will be handled by the grace period following the next
148 "R" Indicates that there are callbacks queued that are
149 ready to be handled by the next grace period.
151 "W" Indicates that there are callbacks queued that are
152 waiting on the current grace period.
154 "D" Indicates that there are callbacks queued that have
155 already been handled by a prior grace period, and are
156 thus waiting to be invoked. Note that callbacks in
157 the process of being invoked are not counted here.
158 Callbacks in the process of being invoked are those
159 that have been removed from the rcu_data structures
160 queues by rcu_do_batch(), but which have not yet been
163 If there are no callbacks in a given one of the above states,
164 the corresponding character is replaced by ".".
166 o "b" is the batch limit for this CPU. If more than this number
167 of RCU callbacks is ready to invoke, then the remainder will
170 o "ci" is the number of RCU callbacks that have been invoked for
171 this CPU. Note that ci+nci+ql is the number of callbacks that have
172 been registered in absence of CPU-hotplug activity.
174 o "nci" is the number of RCU callbacks that have been offloaded from
175 this CPU. This will always be zero unless the kernel was built
176 with CONFIG_RCU_NOCB_CPU=y and the "rcu_nocbs=" kernel boot
177 parameter was specified.
179 o "co" is the number of RCU callbacks that have been orphaned due to
180 this CPU going offline. These orphaned callbacks have been moved
181 to an arbitrarily chosen online CPU.
183 o "ca" is the number of RCU callbacks that have been adopted by this
184 CPU due to other CPUs going offline. Note that ci+co-ca+ql is
185 the number of RCU callbacks registered on this CPU.
188 Kernels compiled with CONFIG_RCU_BOOST=y display the following from
189 /debug/rcu/rcu_preempt/rcudata:
191 0!c=12865 g=12866 pq=1/0 qp=1 dt=83113/140000000000000/0 df=288 of=11 ql=0/0 qs=N... kt=0/O ktl=944 b=10 ci=60709 nci=0 co=748 ca=871
192 1 c=14407 g=14408 pq=1/0 qp=0 dt=100679/140000000000000/0 df=378 of=7 ql=0/119 qs=NRW. kt=0/W ktl=9b6 b=10 ci=109740 nci=0 co=589 ca=485
193 2 c=14407 g=14408 pq=1/0 qp=0 dt=105486/0/0 df=90 of=9 ql=0/89 qs=NRW. kt=0/W ktl=c0c b=10 ci=83113 nci=0 co=533 ca=490
194 3 c=14407 g=14408 pq=1/0 qp=0 dt=107138/0/0 df=142 of=8 ql=0/188 qs=NRW. kt=0/W ktl=b96 b=10 ci=121114 nci=0 co=426 ca=290
195 4 c=14405 g=14406 pq=1/0 qp=1 dt=50238/0/0 df=706 of=7 ql=0/0 qs=.... kt=0/W ktl=812 b=10 ci=34929 nci=0 co=643 ca=114
196 5!c=14168 g=14169 pq=1/0 qp=0 dt=45465/140000000000000/0 df=161 of=11 ql=0/0 qs=N... kt=0/O ktl=b4d b=10 ci=47712 nci=0 co=677 ca=722
197 6 c=14404 g=14405 pq=1/0 qp=0 dt=59454/0/0 df=94 of=6 ql=0/0 qs=.... kt=0/W ktl=e57 b=10 ci=55597 nci=0 co=701 ca=811
198 7 c=14407 g=14408 pq=1/0 qp=1 dt=68850/0/0 df=31 of=8 ql=0/0 qs=.... kt=0/W ktl=14bd b=10 ci=77475 nci=0 co=508 ca=1042
200 This is similar to the output discussed above, but contains the following
203 o "kt" is the per-CPU kernel-thread state. The digit preceding
204 the first slash is zero if there is no work pending and 1
205 otherwise. The character between the first pair of slashes is
208 "S" The kernel thread is stopped, in other words, all
209 CPUs corresponding to this rcu_node structure are
212 "R" The kernel thread is running.
214 "W" The kernel thread is waiting because there is no work
217 "O" The kernel thread is waiting because it has been
218 forced off of its designated CPU or because its
219 ->cpus_allowed mask permits it to run on other than
222 "Y" The kernel thread is yielding to avoid hogging CPU.
224 "?" Unknown value, indicates a bug.
226 The number after the final slash is the CPU that the kthread
227 is actually running on.
229 This field is displayed only for CONFIG_RCU_BOOST kernels.
231 o "ktl" is the low-order 16 bits (in hexadecimal) of the count of
232 the number of times that this CPU's per-CPU kthread has gone
233 through its loop servicing invoke_rcu_cpu_kthread() requests.
235 This field is displayed only for CONFIG_RCU_BOOST kernels.
238 The output of "cat rcu/rcu_preempt/rcuexp" looks as follows:
240 s=21872 d=21872 w=0 tf=0 wd1=0 wd2=0 n=0 sc=21872 dt=21872 dl=0 dx=21872
242 These fields are as follows:
244 o "s" is the starting sequence number.
246 o "d" is the ending sequence number. When the starting and ending
247 numbers differ, there is an expedited grace period in progress.
249 o "w" is the number of times that the sequence numbers have been
250 in danger of wrapping.
252 o "tf" is the number of times that contention has resulted in a
253 failure to begin an expedited grace period.
255 o "wd1" and "wd2" are the number of times that an attempt to
256 start an expedited grace period found that someone else had
257 completed an expedited grace period that satisfies the
258 attempted request. "Our work is done."
260 o "n" is number of times that contention was so great that
261 the request was demoted from an expedited grace period to
262 a normal grace period.
264 o "sc" is the number of times that the attempt to start a
265 new expedited grace period succeeded.
267 o "dt" is the number of times that we attempted to update
270 o "dl" is the number of times that we failed to update the "d"
273 o "dx" is the number of times that we succeeded in updating
277 The output of "cat rcu/rcu_preempt/rcugp" looks as follows:
279 completed=31249 gpnum=31250 age=1 max=18
281 These fields are taken from the rcu_state structure, and are as follows:
283 o "completed" is the number of grace periods that have completed.
284 It is comparable to the "c" field from rcu/rcudata in that a
285 CPU whose "c" field matches the value of "completed" is aware
286 that the corresponding RCU grace period has completed.
288 o "gpnum" is the number of grace periods that have started. It is
289 similarly comparable to the "g" field from rcu/rcudata in that
290 a CPU whose "g" field matches the value of "gpnum" is aware that
291 the corresponding RCU grace period has started.
293 If these two fields are equal, then there is no grace period
294 in progress, in other words, RCU is idle. On the other hand,
295 if the two fields differ (as they are above), then an RCU grace
296 period is in progress.
298 o "age" is the number of jiffies that the current grace period
299 has extended for, or zero if there is no grace period currently
302 o "max" is the age in jiffies of the longest-duration grace period
305 The output of "cat rcu/rcu_preempt/rcuhier" looks as follows:
307 c=14407 g=14408 s=0 jfq=2 j=c863 nfqs=12040/nfqsng=0(12040) fqlh=1051 oqlen=0/0
309 e/e ..>. 0:3 ^0 d/d ..>. 4:7 ^1
311 The fields are as follows:
313 o "c" is exactly the same as "completed" under rcu/rcu_preempt/rcugp.
315 o "g" is exactly the same as "gpnum" under rcu/rcu_preempt/rcugp.
317 o "s" is the current state of the force_quiescent_state()
320 o "jfq" is the number of jiffies remaining for this grace period
321 before force_quiescent_state() is invoked to help push things
322 along. Note that CPUs in idle mode throughout the grace period
323 will not report on their own, but rather must be check by some
324 other CPU via force_quiescent_state().
326 o "j" is the low-order four hex digits of the jiffies counter.
327 Yes, Paul did run into a number of problems that turned out to
328 be due to the jiffies counter no longer counting. Why do you ask?
330 o "nfqs" is the number of calls to force_quiescent_state() since
333 o "nfqsng" is the number of useless calls to force_quiescent_state(),
334 where there wasn't actually a grace period active. This can
335 no longer happen due to grace-period processing being pushed
336 into a kthread. The number in parentheses is the difference
337 between "nfqs" and "nfqsng", or the number of times that
338 force_quiescent_state() actually did some real work.
340 o "fqlh" is the number of calls to force_quiescent_state() that
341 exited immediately (without even being counted in nfqs above)
342 due to contention on ->fqslock.
344 o Each element of the form "3/3 ..>. 0:7 ^0" represents one rcu_node
345 structure. Each line represents one level of the hierarchy,
346 from root to leaves. It is best to think of the rcu_data
347 structures as forming yet another level after the leaves.
348 Note that there might be either one, two, three, or even four
349 levels of rcu_node structures, depending on the relationship
350 between CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT, CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT_LEAF (possibly
351 adjusted using the rcu_fanout_leaf kernel boot parameter), and
352 CONFIG_NR_CPUS (possibly adjusted using the nr_cpu_ids count of
353 possible CPUs for the booting hardware).
355 o The numbers separated by the "/" are the qsmask followed
356 by the qsmaskinit. The qsmask will have one bit
357 set for each entity in the next lower level that has
358 not yet checked in for the current grace period ("e"
359 indicating CPUs 5, 6, and 7 in the example above).
360 The qsmaskinit will have one bit for each entity that is
361 currently expected to check in during each grace period.
362 The value of qsmaskinit is assigned to that of qsmask
363 at the beginning of each grace period.
365 o The characters separated by the ">" indicate the state
366 of the blocked-tasks lists. A "G" preceding the ">"
367 indicates that at least one task blocked in an RCU
368 read-side critical section blocks the current grace
369 period, while a "E" preceding the ">" indicates that
370 at least one task blocked in an RCU read-side critical
371 section blocks the current expedited grace period.
372 A "T" character following the ">" indicates that at
373 least one task is blocked within an RCU read-side
374 critical section, regardless of whether any current
375 grace period (expedited or normal) is inconvenienced.
376 A "." character appears if the corresponding condition
377 does not hold, so that "..>." indicates that no tasks
378 are blocked. In contrast, "GE>T" indicates maximal
379 inconvenience from blocked tasks. CONFIG_TREE_RCU
380 builds of the kernel will always show "..>.".
382 o The numbers separated by the ":" are the range of CPUs
383 served by this struct rcu_node. This can be helpful
384 in working out how the hierarchy is wired together.
386 For example, the example rcu_node structure shown above
387 has "0:7", indicating that it covers CPUs 0 through 7.
389 o The number after the "^" indicates the bit in the
390 next higher level rcu_node structure that this rcu_node
391 structure corresponds to. For example, the "d/d ..>. 4:7
392 ^1" has a "1" in this position, indicating that it
393 corresponds to the "1" bit in the "3" shown in the
394 "3/3 ..>. 0:7 ^0" entry on the next level up.
397 The output of "cat rcu/rcu_sched/rcu_pending" looks as follows:
399 0!np=26111 qsp=29 rpq=5386 cbr=1 cng=570 gpc=3674 gps=577 nn=15903 ndw=0
400 1!np=28913 qsp=35 rpq=6097 cbr=1 cng=448 gpc=3700 gps=554 nn=18113 ndw=0
401 2!np=32740 qsp=37 rpq=6202 cbr=0 cng=476 gpc=4627 gps=546 nn=20889 ndw=0
402 3 np=23679 qsp=22 rpq=5044 cbr=1 cng=415 gpc=3403 gps=347 nn=14469 ndw=0
403 4!np=30714 qsp=4 rpq=5574 cbr=0 cng=528 gpc=3931 gps=639 nn=20042 ndw=0
404 5 np=28910 qsp=2 rpq=5246 cbr=0 cng=428 gpc=4105 gps=709 nn=18422 ndw=0
405 6!np=38648 qsp=5 rpq=7076 cbr=0 cng=840 gpc=4072 gps=961 nn=25699 ndw=0
406 7 np=37275 qsp=2 rpq=6873 cbr=0 cng=868 gpc=3416 gps=971 nn=25147 ndw=0
408 The fields are as follows:
410 o The leading number is the CPU number, with "!" indicating
413 o "np" is the number of times that __rcu_pending() has been invoked
414 for the corresponding flavor of RCU.
416 o "qsp" is the number of times that the RCU was waiting for a
417 quiescent state from this CPU.
419 o "rpq" is the number of times that the CPU had passed through
420 a quiescent state, but not yet reported it to RCU.
422 o "cbr" is the number of times that this CPU had RCU callbacks
423 that had passed through a grace period, and were thus ready
426 o "cng" is the number of times that this CPU needed another
427 grace period while RCU was idle.
429 o "gpc" is the number of times that an old grace period had
430 completed, but this CPU was not yet aware of it.
432 o "gps" is the number of times that a new grace period had started,
433 but this CPU was not yet aware of it.
435 o "ndw" is the number of times that a wakeup of an rcuo
436 callback-offload kthread had to be deferred in order to avoid
439 o "nn" is the number of times that this CPU needed nothing.
442 The output of "cat rcu/rcuboost" looks as follows:
444 0:3 tasks=.... kt=W ntb=0 neb=0 nnb=0 j=c864 bt=c894
445 balk: nt=0 egt=4695 bt=0 nb=0 ny=56 nos=0
446 4:7 tasks=.... kt=W ntb=0 neb=0 nnb=0 j=c864 bt=c894
447 balk: nt=0 egt=6541 bt=0 nb=0 ny=126 nos=0
449 This information is output only for rcu_preempt. Each two-line entry
450 corresponds to a leaf rcu_node structure. The fields are as follows:
452 o "n:m" is the CPU-number range for the corresponding two-line
453 entry. In the sample output above, the first entry covers
454 CPUs zero through three and the second entry covers CPUs four
457 o "tasks=TNEB" gives the state of the various segments of the
458 rnp->blocked_tasks list:
460 "T" This indicates that there are some tasks that blocked
461 while running on one of the corresponding CPUs while
462 in an RCU read-side critical section.
464 "N" This indicates that some of the blocked tasks are preventing
465 the current normal (non-expedited) grace period from
468 "E" This indicates that some of the blocked tasks are preventing
469 the current expedited grace period from completing.
471 "B" This indicates that some of the blocked tasks are in
472 need of RCU priority boosting.
474 Each character is replaced with "." if the corresponding
475 condition does not hold.
477 o "kt" is the state of the RCU priority-boosting kernel
478 thread associated with the corresponding rcu_node structure.
479 The state can be one of the following:
481 "S" The kernel thread is stopped, in other words, all
482 CPUs corresponding to this rcu_node structure are
485 "R" The kernel thread is running.
487 "W" The kernel thread is waiting because there is no work
490 "Y" The kernel thread is yielding to avoid hogging CPU.
492 "?" Unknown value, indicates a bug.
494 o "ntb" is the number of tasks boosted.
496 o "neb" is the number of tasks boosted in order to complete an
497 expedited grace period.
499 o "nnb" is the number of tasks boosted in order to complete a
500 normal (non-expedited) grace period. When boosting a task
501 that was blocking both an expedited and a normal grace period,
502 it is counted against the expedited total above.
504 o "j" is the low-order 16 bits of the jiffies counter in
507 o "bt" is the low-order 16 bits of the value that the jiffies
508 counter will have when we next start boosting, assuming that
509 the current grace period does not end beforehand. This is
512 o "balk: nt" counts the number of times we didn't boost (in
513 other words, we balked) even though it was time to boost because
514 there were no blocked tasks to boost. This situation occurs
515 when there is one blocked task on one rcu_node structure and
516 none on some other rcu_node structure.
518 o "egt" counts the number of times we balked because although
519 there were blocked tasks, none of them were blocking the
520 current grace period, whether expedited or otherwise.
522 o "bt" counts the number of times we balked because boosting
523 had already been initiated for the current grace period.
525 o "nb" counts the number of times we balked because there
526 was at least one task blocking the current non-expedited grace
527 period that never had blocked. If it is already running, it
528 just won't help to boost its priority!
530 o "ny" counts the number of times we balked because it was
531 not yet time to start boosting.
533 o "nos" counts the number of times we balked for other
534 reasons, e.g., the grace period ended first.
537 CONFIG_TINY_RCU debugfs Files and Formats
539 These implementations of RCU provides a single debugfs file under the
540 top-level directory RCU, namely rcu/rcudata, which displays fields in
541 rcu_bh_ctrlblk and rcu_sched_ctrlblk.
543 The output of "cat rcu/rcudata" is as follows:
548 This is split into rcu_sched and rcu_bh sections. The field is as
551 o "qlen" is the number of RCU callbacks currently waiting either
552 for an RCU grace period or waiting to be invoked. This is the
553 only field present for rcu_sched and rcu_bh, due to the
554 short-circuiting of grace period in those two cases.